Within the war relocation centers for people of Japanese descent last
December there was visible a curious phenomenon. Joint announcements by
the War Department in Washington and the Western Defense Command in
California had revoked the mass exclusion orders which for two and a
half years had exiled the center residents from their homes on the West
Coast. Simultaneously, the War Relocation Authority had announced that
it would direct its efforts towards resettling all eligible evacuees by
the end of the year, and that all relocation centers would be closed by
the end of 1945. The residents of these centers had been evacuated
against their will to live in barracks. From the beginning the
majority had hated the all-pervasive desert dust, the communal eating
in mess halls and monotonous mess hall food, the lack of space and
privacy. Yet, paradoxically, many of them had become comfortably
accustomed to life in the centers and had developed a profound
reluctance to leave.

Before evacuation, most were too proud to accept charity. They had in
the time since come to cling to the false security of the center
and of government support. Life outside looked complicated and
difficult. Within, they were at home in the internal politics and
gossip of the center. Center newspapers were issued regularly; the
center baseball teams played neighborhood towns, and the towns played
return matches. Evacuees said incredulously: "The center can't
close; the center is like a town."

Looking at the "outside," they heard of problems of finding housing, of
getting jobs, of making friends. Incidents of terrorism on the West
Coast were magnified against the soundboard of center gossip and rumor.
Boycotts, legal difficulties, problems of support, made the
dependency and isolation of the centers seem comparatively desirable.
With a center-bred timidity, the residents tended to minimize the
favorable reports from already-relocated evacuees, and to see the
problems of resettlement as almost overwhelming.

We knew that many of these problems were real problems, even though not
insoluble. It would be no easy matter to return 60,000 people to the
mainstream of American life which for over two years had flowed on
without them. In 1941, when Japanese fliers attacked Pearl Harbor, the
Japanese of America, one of our most recent immigrant groups, had just
begun the process of assimilation into American life which so many
other national groups had followed earlier. It was the Nisei, the first
American-born generation, just coming of age, who were taking their
places in American schools and offices, whose friends were Americans of
all nationalities, and whose culture was almost wholly American.

Evacuation checked this gradual, wholly natural process of cultural
assimilation. Taken suddenly out of normal mixed communities, aliens
and citizens alike were grouped in the tightly ingrown, racially
segregated communities, where it became easier and easier to think
and talk "Japanese" and to forget the normal life outside.

At the same time, in the communities which the evacuees had left, the
ranks closed behind them. Renters took over the management of their
farms; new tenants moved into their homes; Mexican workers took their
place in the floating farm labor market. Behind them, too, the ranks
closed psychologically. Set apart from other Americans even more by the
fact of their evacuation and segregation in centers than by the
cultural and physical differences which had distinguished them before
the war, the Japanese Americans became even more suspected, distrusted
and even hated. Grouped in centers, they were a natural target for
race-baiting opportunities.

But it is clear that the re-integration of the evacuees into American
life would become no easier as time went on. The longer the
evacuees remained in centers, the more dependent they would become, and
the harder readjustment would be to make. The maintenance of the
evacuees in centers would only increase suspicion and encourage
race-baiting; the passage of time would make the economic readjustment
no easier. Somehow the readjustment had to be made in order to avoid
the only alternative -- the permanent maintenance of centers for people
of Japanese descent as "rejects" which our democracy had failed to
absorb. We knew that the full war economy and the demand for workers
increased the urgency of speedy liquidation, and that with the help of
the many groups and individuals who had been supporting the
resettlement program all along, we could do the job, by facing each
problem and tackling it as it came.

For over two years, we had been helping evacuees to relocate
in communities all over the country outside the evacuated area. It
was a slower process by far than the original evacuation -- and with
reason, for it was a process of individual readjustment on the
basis of individual choice, not a mass movement. The post-revocation
program was different again, in that it was to be a program of total,
rather than partial relocation. But it was still a program of
individual resettlement with individual freedom of choice. We had to work
on and help in solving the resettlement problems of every evacuee
eligible to leave the center, no matter what his age, financial
status, or number of dependents. It was a challenge we were determined
to meet.

Many of the evacuees face the problem of starting out again with
meager financial resources. For nearly three years, they have been
earning no more than $19 a month. Many suffered severe losses in the
evacuation, and had their savings still further depleted while living
in the centers. But those who are physically able to be self-supporting
do not need or really want charity. The most effective help which they
can be given is help in getting back into paying occupations as soon as
possible. To this end, the field relocation offices advise the evacuees
of jobs which are available in the communities where they plan to
resettle and, if necessary, help them to make contacts with prospective
employers before they even leave the center.

Farmers and independent businessmen who need loans to get started again
cannot get them direct from WRA, since we have no special authority
from Congress to go into the loan business. But WRA can and does advise
the evacuees as to the private and public agencies to which they can
apply for loans. Some men who formerly ran independent businesses have
made arrangements to start work as salaried employees in order to save
enough to become independent again. Similarly, some farmers are
starting in again as share-croppers or as paid farm managers. It isn't
easy to work your way up again, but those who are doing it seem to be
proud of their independence, and confident that their years of
experience will speed up the process of reacquiring their former status.

Evacuees without any financial reserve to draw upon immediately can
apply at the centers for short-term assistance grants to cover such
costs of resettlement as the expense of new furniture, or a first
month's advance rent, or may later apply for grants covering such
emergency expenses as medical care. This assistance is in addition to
the $25 per person given to all needy resettlers by WRA to tide
them over until the first pay checks start coming in.

All these types of assistance are set up to help the individuals who
are able to support themselves once they get started. Those people who
because of old age, illness, or number of minor children are not able
to be self-supporting present another sort of problem. Since WRA
cannot go on acting as a welfare agency for these people indefinitely,
we are gradually assisting these individuals to relocate to communities
where they can receive the continuing, long-term assistance which they
require. Some, of course, have children who can help in their support.
Many have boys in uniform and are receiving Army allotments. Others
will have to depend on established welfare agencies. Some of them are
eligible for the categorical assistance programs of the Social Security
Board -- Old Age Assistance, Aid to Dependent Children, and Aid to the
Blind. Others must be cared for by county agencies. The problems of
these dependent people are referred, by the welfare staff at the
centers through the field offices of WRA, to the appropriate agencies
in the community where they plan to resettle so that they will know --
before they leave the center, if necessary -- what kinds of assistance
they will be eligible to receive after resettlement.

Cooperation from state and county welfare agencies has been excellent. State
boards in the three West Coast states -- and in Oregon and
Washington the state board supervises county welfare programs -- have pledged
cooperation in helping needy evacuee residents. Although the county
welfare boards in California are not under state supervision, the
individual county boards have with minor exceptions proved willing
to give evacuees the help available to other needy residents. Even
bed-ridden patients are being moved to hospitals in their home towns.
Indeed, cooperation from West Coast welfare agencies has been so good
that in some cases, individuals have been accepted by the agencies for
some weeks before they were able to complete other arrangements to
return.

Another serious problem aside from that of finances has been that of housing.
Anyone who have recently tried moving will appreciate the difficulties
involved in finding a house or apartment in most cities today. On the
West Coast, the problem is particularly acute, for West Coast industry
expanded tremendously during the war, and both war workers and
relatives of men in service in the Pacific flocked into West Coast
cities. Negroes moved into the former Little Tokyo in thousands,
and evacuees returned to their former communities to find them full to
seam-splitting.

However, when the job WRA is doing is looked at in perspective, it is
far less complicated than the job of finding housing for the many
thousands of incoming war workers in industrial cities. As this article
is written, evacuees have been leaving the centers for the East and
Midwest in slightly larger numbers than those going back to the West
Coast, and it seems safe to predict that although this proportion may
shift, no more than 35,000 will return to the Coast from centers.
Many of these will return to rural areas, and the others will be
scattered in dozens of cities all up and down the Coast, so that the
number to take up residence in any one West Coast city will not be
large.

The housing problem is a tough one, but we are convinced that it can be
beaten -- not just by one cure-all solution, but by attacking it on all
sides with every possible partial solution. For those evacuees, of
course, who own their own homes, the problem is merely one of
repossession, and the WRA staff is helping such people to get their
house back under OPA rulings. For others, new housing has to be found.
We are arranging for a staff member in each main field office to devote
full time to locating housing, working with local housing agencies, and
advising the cooperating private agencies which have given invaluable
assistance in solving this problem. A housing registry can be kept.
Evacuees who return to their own homes are sometimes able to take in
friends. Other evacuees have found jobs as domestic or as caretakers
which have housing furnished. In Portland, Spokane and San Francisco as
in Philadelphia and some other cities, we have been successful in
arranging for public housing projects to accept evacuee tenants.

In general, it is true that the turn-over in a large city is so great
that an evacuee who can find a temporary place to stay, and is willing
to keep on the look-out, will sooner or later find a permanent place
more to his taste. This is the purpose served by the hostels which have
been established by interested private groups in a number of cities on
the West Coast and elsewhere (in many cases, with the loan of WRA
surplus equipment) to shelter evacuee families while they look for
permanent homes. It takes persistence, and a good deal of leg-work, but
in general, we have found that the housing shortage can be solved, in
California as in Cleveland, Chicago, and other war-crowded communities
in the Midwest and East.

Other factors which once loomed up as "problems" are turning out to be
no serious problems at all. The transfer of evacuee children to
outside schools has so far gone forward with remarkable smoothness,
with regard to both the transfer of academic credits and the social
adjustment of the pupils concerned. Evacuee children returning to the
West Coast have met with little difficulty. In Santa Barbara, the
nine-year-old son of one evacuee family was chosen captain of the
soccer team within ten days after his enrollment in school. Evacuees
who reported difficulty in getting insurance for their property, soon
found that although some companies refused to serve people of Japanese
descent, others -- whose names are kept on file by WRA -- are entirely
willing to accept evacuee business.

However, with the lifting of the mass exclusion orders, the problem of
public sentiment towards the resettlers took on a new importance. In
the East and Midwest, with some very few exceptions, the evacuee
resettlers fitted into their new homes and jobs without a ripple.
In general, those individuals of Japanese descent who went back to the
West Coast before December 18 under special permits aroused
comparatively little consternation among their neighbors. Indeed,
newspapermen interviewing the neighbors of an evacuee farmer who
returned in November found one citizen sorely confused; he didn't know
that his acquaintance Yamamoto had been away.

But with the Army's revocation of the mass exclusion orders, racists,
economic opportunists, and bar-room heroes joined forces in a
desperate, last-ditch attempt to keep the evacuees from their homes.
The petition, the mass meeting, the "No Japs Wanted" sign, the boycott,
and the rifle shot by night were the weapons of this group, seeking to
use every means, including force, to make the wartime
evacuation into a permanent defeat for Americans of Japanese descent --
and for American democracy.

Fortunately for both, the vocal exclusionists on the West
Coast have found themselves outnumbered by the tolerant and fair-minded.
Incidents of violence and terrorism against returning evacuees received
more and more unfavorable publicity throughout the nation in news
stories, editorials, and radio comment. Secretary Ickes' condemnation
of these incidents was widely publicized. Meanwhile, the
democratic-minded on the West Coast joined together to support the
decision of the War Department and to protect the constitutional rights
of people of Japanese descent. Citizens' committees to counteract
racist agitation were formed in communities up and down the Coast; in
Monterey over four hundred and fifty leading citizens countered a paid
advertisement by an exclusionist group with a full-page advertisement
of their own entitled "The Democratic Way of Life for All"; church and
civic groups organized hostels, passed resolutions, and wrote letters
expressing their stand.

We in WRA have come to believe that giving to the public full and
accurate information on the activities of the terrorists is one of the
most effective means for putting a stop to their activities. It is
noteworthy that, as this is written, there has been only one reported
instance of attempted violence against a returned evacuee in the period
of nearly two months since Secretary Ickes' May 12 statement of
condemnation. Accordingly, we have followed a policy of publicizing the
facts on all "incidents," as well as referring to the federal
authorities of the Department of Justice all cases of boycott of
terrorism where it appears that a federal statute may have been
violated.

Probably the most effective fight for the rights of Americans of
Japanese ancestry has been made neither by this agency nor by law
enforcement officials nor by interested private individuals. This fight
has been made by the American soldiers of Japanese descent, who
in their magnificent record of battling against fascism abroad have
done more than any other group could possibly do to defeat racist
ideologies at home. It is not remarkable that some exclusionist groups
were quick to protect the admission of Nisei into the armed forces. The
achievements of the Nisei soldiers, particularly those who have been
fighting in the Pacific against the Japanese enemy, and whose
activities are coming increasingly to public attention, have been very
effective in breaking through the psychological haze with which racial
agitators have tried to surround the distinction between race and
loyalty.

We have come to see very clearly during the past three years that in
the long run, although race prejudice may at first be intensified and
brought to the surface by the settlement of people of Japanese descent
in a prejudiced area, it is finally dissipated only by having the
Japanese Americans come in, settle down, and take part in the life of
the community. This has happened in communities all over the United
States since the resettlement program began. It is now happening on the
West Coast.

The prejudices which can grow bitter and intense against a racial
stereotype are harder to maintain against a neighbor. It is significant
that at the time of evacuation, the citizens of one California
community went to the Western Defense Command to state that although
they knew most Japanese to be dishonest, untrustworthy, and disloyal,
they knew their own neighbors of Japanese descent to be "different."
They compared their neighbors -- unwittingly -- to the racial
stereotype -- and concluded that the local group was "exceptional." It
is also significant that race prejudice against the Japanese
increased, rather than decreased, after the evacuation. And as the
evacuees return, settle down, take up their plows, open their shops,
re-commence professional practice -- as their children enter school and
join the football and basketball teams -- the race-baiters will find
themselves fighting a losing and unpopular battle in their attempts to
make the evacuation permanent.

The program of the War Relocation Authority has been an
exciting adventure in the democratic method. It is an adventure in
which Americans all over the United States have taken part. Perhaps
110,000 displaced people seems like a small problem, compared to the
millions of homeless and dislocated people of Europe and Asia. Their
losses and difficulties may seem small, compared to those of the
Chinese, the Poles, or the Jews of Europe. But this comparatively small
segment of our population has had a symbolic significance out of all
proportion to its size. It has been a kind of testing ground for
democratic procedures in the country which has become increasingly
the leader of world democracy.

We had a mass evacuation, dictated by war necessity, which
overrode the peacetime rights of one minority in our population.
But in our gradual, slow, sometimes painful process of individual
readjustment, we have furnished a guarantee that the American way
is to repair and make restitution; that even in a war, we do not
forget the rights of individuals; and that while fighting on
battlefronts around the world, we will not allow ourselves to forget
the problems of democracy near at hand.